Let's Get Some Facts Out About Iraq!
Lone Haranguer
we call them nay-sayers or gloom & doomers. Mostly liberal shills
laboring to help the DNC win the next election.
We need to take some credible people on bus tours of Iraq and see what
their impressions are.
LZ
>
> Jack Kelly: There's a war on / Better to fight the hard-core killers
> in Iraq
>
> Sunday, August 24, 2003
>
> There is no development in Iraq that the news media do not treat as a
> setback, so it comes as no surprise that crepe is being hung by the
> cartload in the wake of the suicide truck bombing of the United
> Nations compound in Baghdad.
>
> Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette
> (jke...@post-gazette.com).>
>
> As I write this two days after the bombing, Nexis indicates there
> already have been 183 news stories printed that use the word "chaos"
> to describe the situation in Iraq, 33 that use the word "quagmire" and
> four that use both.
>
> Television is worse. The "CBS Evening News" broadcast Aug. 20 a report
> by Mark Phillips which Mickey Kaus said in his Slate.com column was
> "so jaw-droppingly one-sided and opportunistically defeatist" that it
> "makes the BBC look like 'The O'Reilly Factor.' "
>
> "Phillips outlines U.S. goals in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . and then
> asserts flatly that 'chaos and blood, not security and democracy, have
> been the result,' " Kaus said. The only authorities Phillips cited for
> this conclusion were two leaders of radical Islamic groups (neither of
> them Iraqi).
>
> "That's it. No attempt to even summarize what the Bush administration
> might credibly argue that it's achieved, much less to actually film
> somebody saying it," Kaus wrote. "Even as an antiwar document, this
> was bad journalism."
>
> "Judging from news reports . . . some might think my native Iraq was
> in a terrible mess. Not so," wrote Ayad Rahim in The Washington Times.
>
> "Except for the isolated contract killings and sabotage, the country
> is calm and experiencing improved conditions day by day," Rahim said.
> "A general who previously served in Kosovo said things are happening
> in Iraq after three months that didn't happen after 12 months in
> Kosovo."
>
> "There is another Iraq the media virtually ignore," wrote Marine Lance
> Cpl. John Guardino. "It has been a model of success. The streets are
> safe, petty and violent crime are low, water and electrical services
> are almost universally available, and ordinary Iraqis are beginning to
> clean up and rebuild their neighborhoods. . . . A deep level of mutual
> trust and respect has developed between the Marines and the populace
> here in central and southern Iraq."
>
> The bombing of the U.N. complex, and the earlier bombing of the
> Jordanian embassy, actually are indications the United States is
> succeeding in Iraq.
>
> The original strategy of the terrorists was what might be called the
> Mogadishu strategy. Kill a few Americans and they'll leave, as they
> did in Somalia in 1993.
>
> The terrorists killed a few Americans and we didn't leave. And the
> terrorists discovered a downside to attacking Americans. Americans
> shoot back. As I write this, Central Command is reporting that Ali
> Hassan al Majid, who orchestrated the gassing of the Kurds, No. 5 in
> the deck of 55, has been taken into custody. Saddam's sons Uday and
> Qusay are burning in hell. Saddam is running like hell. The Mogadishu
> strategy hasn't worked.
>
> The terrorists have discovered that if they attack Americans, they'll
> probably get killed. So they've shifted to softer targets. But though
> this reduces military danger, it increases political risk.
>
> "Baghdad residents condemned the bombing, drawing a distinction
> between terrorism against humanitarian workers and the guerrilla
> attacks on U.S. soldiers, which many Iraqis consider legitimate
> resistance to foreign occupation," the Knight Ridder news service
> said.
>
> Guerrillas must swim in a sea of at least some popular support. The
> sea is drying up.
>
> Journalists are beginning to note, and lament, that Iraq is becoming a
> magnet for al-Qaida types. "It would appear the very terrorism the war
> in Iraq was meant to combat is now being drawn into the country with
> renewed vigor and no lack of targets," wailed UPI senior editor Claude
> Salhani.
>
> As usual, journalists are putting a negative spin on a mostly positive
> development. To win the war on terror, we have to kill the hard-core
> terrorists. It is better to fight them in Iraq, where our soldiers can
> kill them without reading them their Miranda rights first, than it is
> to wait for them to strike in Chicago or New York.
>